It's a Wonderful Life
by aswanandapirate
Summary: When you look at their lives, Killian and Emma aren't so different. They are like two sides of the same coin.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: I'm sorry in advance for any pain this fic may cause you.**_

The king smiled down at his newborn baby girl, taking advantage of their final moments together. The smile reflected in her shining blue eyes looked just like his. Below him on the bed, his wife had started to silently weep. She knew that, in order to save the kingdom, their precious Emma would have to be sent to another world all alone. As a parent, the idea of leaving the tiny girl nestled in her arms for a second sounded less appealing than ripping her own heart out, but she had no choice. The curse was coming and they were all doomed if they didn't.

Charming wrapped his arms around the two of them and urged his wife not to cry. "Please don't cry, Snow." Usually when his wife cried about one thing or another, he could make it better with soothing assurances and kisses, but this time was different. There was no comfort for either of them. Emma was going to grow up alone, and there was nothing that Snow or Charming could do about it.

When the Queen's guards started to approach and Charming finally had to leave with their daughter, Snow broke into violent sobs. _My baby is gone and we are about to be cursed, maybe forever._

After a minute or two, she pushed those negative thoughts away and rushed after her husband. They may be doomed, but she'd be damned if she wasn't going to say goodbye to her husband and daughter one more time before it happened.

She arrived in the nursery only to find an empty wardrobe and an unconscious (or...dead?) Charming on the ground. Snow kissed him and hoped for the best, but nothing seemed to happen. True love's kiss was...useless? Just as Snow was about to give it a second try, the Evil Queen appeared in the nursery. The Queen's gleeful laughter at Snow's misfortune had her blood boiling. Discreetly, Snow checked her husband's pulse. _He's still alive!_ _There is still hope for us yet._

The curse reigned down on Snow and the Queen, but just before it whisked them away, Snow yelled, "You're going to lose. I know it now. You're going to lose. Good will _always_ win!"

After that all Snow could hear was screaming and breaking glass. Then silence.

* * *

The crashing thunder shook the windowpanes at the far end of the bedroom in the old manor. Three figures stood around the bed of a woman screaming in the throes of childbirth, one being her husband. She came down from the latest contraction breathing hard and her husband gave her hand a squeeze, love shining in his eyes.

"Do you know what _your_ son is doing to me, Davy? I would hate you for this if I didn't love you so much." The woman glared up at her husband and winced at the continued cramping in her lower abdomen. "Christ. A little warrior, he is."

"Muriel-" Davy squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lip. "Please don't strain yourself dear. You remember what happened to your sister when she gave-"

She cut him off. "That's not going to happen. She was anemic. I'm not. I'm going to be fine, okay?" She thought of the niece they had raised as their own in her sister's absence and vowed to never let the same fate befall her own son. "Soon enough, Marian is going to have a little cousin to play with, and we're all going to be _fine_."

Davy nodded and kissed his wife gently on the cheek. "Whatever you say dear." He still wasn't convinced, so he went to ask the additional doctor they had called in the other room to be ready in case she started to bleed out.

A scream echoed from their bedroom. Another contraction, Davy guessed. He strode in expecting another glare from his wife, but the sight before him was much _much_ worse. Muriel was screaming, blood was all over the sheets, nurses were swarming around the bed trying to figure out why she was bleeding, and their doctor's booming voice was repeating over and over, "Push! Push, dear! You have to push or he's not going to make it!" Davy rushed towards the bed and arrived just as his wife had started to weep.

"I'm sorry, honey." she let out another scream and in the background, the doctor boomed out again, _"We've got crowning-someone get me some scissors!"_

Davy's worst fears were realized as he watched his wife giving birth and dying simultaneously. Her face had already started to whiten and Davy, desperate to distract her from her pain, asked, "No, Muriel. You're going to be fine. Now...what shall we name our son?"

The next scream Davy heard didn't come from his wife. It was high pitched and wailing and it was coming straight from the lungs of his newborn son. Muriel continued to bleed out as the nurses hurried to wrap up their son so that she could hold her son for the first-and last-time. Meanwhile, Davy was kissing and hugging and holding on to his wife with all he had.

The nurse holding their son came up to the bed and set him into in his mother's waiting arms. She stared down at him for a moment before catching her husband's eyes and whispering, "Killian. Let's name him Killian."

Davy bent down to kiss his wife's forehead and sighed, "All right dear. That sounds like a wonderful name. Killian it is."

She beamed down at the tiny boy and noticed that his eyes were exactly the same color as hers. She let out a strangled giggle, her eyes never leaving the child. "Look honey! His eyes look just like-" She never finished her sentence.

Davy took the boy - his son - into his arms just as Muriel's arms became limp. She had passed out from blood loss. The doctors and nurses did all they could to save her, but it wasn't enough. She passed in the next couple of minutes.

A few minutes later, the room was silent. The only noise in the room was coming from Davy, his sobs echoing through the now empty bedroom. There was no comfort for him now. His love was gone forever, his heart gone with her. All he had left to live for now was his newborn son, and even that didn't seem like enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**_A/N: So this chapter might be more painful than the last. Sorry dears. Fluff is coming sometime soon though!_**

_16 years later..._

The cookie jar was just out of reach. Emma had stretched her arm out as far as she could, just about to brush her fingers against the edge of the jar, when a the sound of a door slamming jarred her so much that she knocked the damn thing over. It fell to the tile floor of the kitchen and shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

Her foster mother walked in, yelling, "Emma what have you done now? I leave for five minutes and you're already destroying my house. I knew I would regret taking you in." Her "mother" stopped to spit chewing tobacco into a nearby cup and stuff some more in her mouth. It was a disgusting and unhealthy habit, but Emma was too afraid to say so.

Emma scrambled to pick up the pieces of of the broken cookie jar littered on the floor as her foster mother warned, "You had better watch it from now on. I could have you out of here with a snap of my fingers if I wanted to."

"Sorry, _mom_." Emma rolled her eyes as she regurgitated her normal apology, placing a sarcastic emphasis on her last uttered word. 'Mom' was the last thing that this woman was. "It won't happen again."

"You're damn right it won't." Her "mother" grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her out of the kitchen. "Now go to your room. Your father can punish you when he gets home."

Emma stormed off, cradling her left hand with her right. Her wrist was already tender from the "punishment" she had gotten for missing curfew earlier that that week. She closed herself in her room, making sure not to slam the door for fear of upsetting her foster mother again. Honestly, Emma wasn't sure why the woman in the other room had the right to call herself a mother. She drank, chewed tobacco, pushed her kids around (_literally_)_, _and she allowed _him_ to "discipline" their children and turned a blind eye to the bruises and cuts that seemed to appear on their limbs afterwards. How those two fooled the state into believing they were fit to raise children, she didn't know, but there was one thing Emma did know: how to take care of herself.

Growing up in foster homes just like this one taught her that if she didn't look out for herself, no one would. Her skin had thickened over the years, and Emma was numb to the pain inflicted on her daily because she had a dream. She dreamed of leaving this crap town and moving somewhere where her various foster parents could never find her. The first city on the list to visit was Portland.

Emma took a few moments to mourn silently for her foster brothers and sisters who were too young to successfully run away. She almost wanted to take them all with her, but after a lot of back and forth arguments with herself, finally decided against it. Emma decided to stick with her mantra: _Look out for yourself, Swan. No one else ever has. No one else ever will._ With those three sentences on repeat in her head, Emma successfully ignored the painful screams coming from the room over. She snatched the bag she had packed off the ground, pushed open her bedroom window, and slid out into the night.

* * *

Killian lit the final candle, its flickering light immediately illuminating the painting of his mother hanging in the corner. She had been a strong willed woman filled with fire and passion. At least, that's what his father had told him she was like. Because she died giving birth to him, Killian never knew his mother. All he had to keep her memory alive was this painting and a few details about her uttered from time to time by his constantly absentee father.

He overheard people whispering from time to time about his father. "There goes Davy Jones," they'd say, not-so-discreetly pointing as Killian and his father walked by. "He used to be a lord, you know. Respectable too." The next person would always chime in, "Well what happened to him?" Anyone could answer that inquiry, because everyone knew what happened to "poor old Davy Jones". Everyone in the town knew that Davy Jones had fallen apart at the seams after his wife died. Instead of focusing on raising his son up to be a respectable member of the court, he had turned to alcohol and squandered away their wealth to sate his gambling habit.

So here they were. Well, to be more accurate, here _Killian _was, sitting in the corner of their shack at the town's edge, lighting candles in front of the only picture he had of his mother and praying, no, begging any higher power that would listen to bring his mother back to them. He knew it was crazy to miss a woman who he had never met so much, but he did. Killian longed to know what it felt like to have two parents who loved him. Hell, he'd even settle for having _one_ parent love him. But he didn't. He had nothing.

By the time Davy returned from the tavern down the street, it was hours past sundown and Killian had already given up the hope that his father would at least show up to the ceremony of sorts he had set up for the anniversary of his mother's death. The candles he had lit had long since gone out and their one room shack was equal parts dark and silent. That is, until Davy bellowed, "Killian! Come here, my boy! I've got a surprise for you."

He approached his father, steeling himself to catch him in case he passed out during his little speech. "What is it, father?" _If it's another bottle of rum, I swear I'll-_

"We're going on an adventure!"

"What?" Killian forced himself not to get his hopes up, but the premise seemed promising.

Davy grinned down at his son, a rare occurrence these days, before continuing, "An adventure! Pack a bag, Killian. We're going out to see the world!"

"But- How?"

"On a ship called 'The Dutchman'. I met some of her crew tonight at the bar and they were looking for more deck hands, so I told them we were in. Isn't that wonderful? We finally have a chance to start over!" The look in his father's eyes told Killian that he wasn't making this up. They really _did_ have a chance to start over together as a family.

He gaped up at his father. "'_The_ Dutchman'? As in, the fastest ship in all the realms, able to destroy any vessel that dares to cross it? _That 'Dutchman'?"_ Killian decided that just this once he was going to throw caution into the wind and trust his father. "That's amazing! When do we leave?"

"Early tomorrow morning. So get ready, lad. We're going on an adventure."

_A couple of hours later..._

Davy woke up to the sound of tapping. To be exact, it was a rhythmic but quiet tapping coming from the direction of the window. He turned to make sure that Killian was asleep in his makeshift bed across the room before tiptoeing towards the window to see what was the matter.

Killian and Davy tended to leave their windows open at night so they could feel the sea air blowing in from the harbor a few streets over. Davy came to the window and sniffed the air outside. It was salty and fresh with a hint of sewage as usual, but something didn't feel right. He felt as if someone was watching their shack from afar. The feeling didn't sit well with him, but he shrugged it off started back towards his bed. Before he could, though, a hand shot in from the window and snatched the back of his pajamas. Soon several more hands shot in and grabbed hold of him. Davy didn't even have a chance to yell to his son before the hands, and the bodies belonging to them, dragged him off into the night.

_A few hours later..._

The blinding sunlight shining through the window was the first thing Killian saw. The shack was eerily quiet for this time of morning, especially considering the fact that his father told him they were leaving early. Speaking of fathers, Killian couldn't find his. Davy wasn't in his bed, he wasn't in the makeshift kitchen in the corner, and he wasn't in the outhouse. Killian looked all around the house, inside and outside, then made his way over to the tavern down the street. If Davy wasn't at home, the only other place he would be was in the tavern drinking himself under a table.

After discovering that his father wasn't there either, Killian had a sickening thought: _What if he left without me?_ He sprinted back to their shack and checked under the bed. The bag that the two of them were going to put their belongings in for the trip was gone. So were Davy's hat and boots, along with the flask that he never parted with. His father had actually _left_ _without him_.

At that thought, the boy sank to the ground, tears welling in his eyes. Sure, Killian didn't trust his father and he had to take care of him when he got drunk, but he never thought that he was capable of this. Capable of leaving - no, abandoning - his only son to fend for himself. And why? Because of some "great adventure" on board The Dutchman. Bull_shit._ His father had lied to him the night before. He didn't want to go on the adventure of a lifetime with his son. Davy had seen an opportunity to leave and start a new life on his own, so he took it, simple as that.

Killian grabbed the rum bottle off the nightstand next to his father's bed and threw it across the room. Next he threw the oil lamp, then the wooden cup, and then the nightstand itself. In his anger, Killian destroyed the entire shack, leaving only the painting of his mother in the corner untouched. In his mind, she was the only one who ever cared about him.

After Killian calmed down a bit and caught his breath, he made the snap decision to leave. He packed a bag with a couple of shirts and some food for the journey, then stormed out of the shack and made his way to the docks. He talked his way onto the nearest vessel leaving for the mainland, claiming that he could work harder than all the other sailors combined. Somehow the captain agreed to take him on, and before he knew it, Killian was on his way. He fixed his eyes on the horizon and he never looked back.

_Ten years later..._

Davy stepped onto the dock for the first time in ten years, and he had never been happier. He finally had the chance to go home and explain to his son what had really happened ten years ago when he was taken. Davy had spent years fixating on that night and trying to think of what he could have done differently, but in the end he realized that, for once, it wasn't his fault. The crew of The Dutchman had stolen him out of his house, and once he set foot on the ship, he wasn't allowed back on land for ten years. Davy had no choice and he hoped that Killian would understand that.

He imagined that the boy was all grown up now, living in a respectable house nowhere near their old shack with a wife of his own and a child or two. He hoped Killian had been able to move on like he couldn't, but after asking around, Davy learned otherwise. The townspeople had found their shack empty and destroyed ten years ago. After finding blood on the floor, they had looked everywhere for the Jones boy, but they never found his body. Everyone had assumed the boy was dead.

Only hours later, Davy found himself at his son's grave site. He was heartbroken and alone and drunk off his ass. The man had lost everything, but he still had hope that his son was alive. After all, the townspeople had never found his body. But, even if he was dead, at least the boy finally had a chance to meet his mother.

Davy noticed after a few minutes of drinking that one of the things Muriel used to say to him was engraved on Killian's tombstone. It read, _"Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting."_


End file.
